Soon
by borderline-mary
Summary: Companion piece to my YYH poem 'Dreamer'. Hiei contemplates leaving, in more ways than one.


_Soon_

First YYH fic.

* * *

Here in the shadows where I make my home, I wonder what the light feels like. I've spent brief moments in its splendor, but always, when I return to the obscurity that is my domain, I cannot remember what it aroused in me. I become a shell, a frame that supports a vanished substance, as I have always been. I wonder when was the last moment I truly felt anything but pain. Perhaps I never did; it's so hard to know.

It's all I remember—the pain, I mean. I can't recall a time when it didn't dog my steps, omnipresent, repressible only for moments before its return. I could push it to the farthest corner of my mind, and hold it there, but it was never truly gone. I learned to veil it, to deny its existence, for once it was said that to deny something will cause its demise, was it not? It seemed to help, but never brought the pain to an end.

I wonder if Kurama knows. Probably. His is the same kind of pain. But he shares it with others, and lessens it thereby. I can never do that. He alone may know what torment I embrace within, but I will not share with him. Never. I will never share with anyone. That way lies vulnerability, and I have no wish to be vulnerable.

I sometimes think that I'm gripping a thread, a delicate filament that is all that anchors me to sanity. Perhaps I am. It won't be too long before that thread snaps. But I'm not worried. No, not worried at all. After all, that's what I want. Maybe when I can no longer think and no longer live, the pain will subside and give me some measure of tranquility, serenity.

Then again, maybe not. I have only to wait and see.

It's a dull ache sometimes, and a sharp, rending agony at others. Right now, as I think of it and ponder what I have become, it is the latter. And the worst of it, the worst of it is that I cannot bandage my wounds, I cannot stop them from festering, for they are not physical; no, they are scars of the mind, forever to be borne in silence and eternal hope for the end.

A soul such as mine should never have existed in the first place. What am I, to the world? A scourge of killing and rage and hatred, and worse, the enjoyment of all of it. Or rather, I used to enjoy it. It has lost its magnetism for me, and I find myself without purpose. Did I ever have a purpose? I'm not certain whether I did once, or whether I merely deluded myself into believing that I did, just to give myself a reason not to drive my blade through my own heart instead of that of another.

Kurama, Yuusuke, that idiot Kuwabara, even Yukina: none of them would give much more than a passing thought for my life, and even then only because I'm useful to them. Some of them would even prefer to see me gone. I can tell. It's fine with me. And I understand. I do nothing good, and indeed much that is destructive to everyone around me. Why should they all not want me to leave? I do.

Perhaps that is what I should do. I think that I will. But I don't know how soon. I need to find a place near at hand yet far enough away that they cannot find me. Not that they will let me die in peace. No, they'll resurrect me over and over again, because of some foolish notion that I'm worth something. That's why it has to be far. But it also must be near, so that I can say goodbye.

Goodbye. Such a useless sentiment. And yet I want to. Not for them, for me. I admit to the weakness of caring. Especially for Yukina and Kurama: my sister and my friend. They are the only ones who truly ever bothered to care. They don't anymore; they never should have. How could they, after discovering what I really am—a sick and twisted soul bent on devastation and ruin, totally incapable of love? Caring perhaps, but not love. That is beyond the bounds that my worthless evil allows me to touch.

So that is how it stands. The pain is receding now, becoming dull, almost bearable. When I go away, it will vanish completely, leaving behind only a floating memory that has no home.

How long until I leave? I'm not certain.

Soon.


End file.
